Daily Bulletin

Wednesday, January 14, 1998

Village I work will resume

The housing office is getting ready to move to temporary quarters
so that "phase II" of the renovations to UW's Village I residence
complex can start this winter.

The budget for the renovations is $3,852,007, and the board of
governors is expected to approve a contract for the work when it
meets February 3. About three-quarters of the money is coming from
the food services department, which will get a new central kitchen
and bakery, "open concept servery", grill, café and dining
room in the Village. Also planned, and to be paid for from the
residences budget, are study rooms, a video games room, a multi-purpose
and seminar room, and a central elevator, lobby and stairway.
The new lobby space will be atop the building, linking the existing
Great Hall and office areas.

Phase I of the Village work, finished last summer, included a
laundry area, an Internet café, administrative offices and
a central information desk.

Jennifer Patterson in the Village I office reports that
the housing office ("where all Village I, Ron Eydt Village, Columbia
Lake Townhouses, and Minota
Hagey Residence applications are accepted and processed") and the
off-campus housing office are moving to Tutor House #4, between
Village I and REV, as of February 1. They'll move back to their
new quarters in Village I by the end of August.

You can still give to UW

And you can still get a 1997 tax credit for doing so -- that's the
message from Meredith McGinnis of UW's
development
office, who helps manage the Keystone Fund, through which
staff, faculty and retirees make financial contributions to the
university.

"The federal
government has extended the deadline for making 1997 charitable
contributions to January 31," she points out.
The extension
was announced for the benefit of charities that do their fund-raising
by mail and were badly hurt by the November postal strike, but it
applies equally to donations made by other means -- "gifts made by
cash, credit card, cheque, money order and gifts-in-kind", McGinnis
says. "Donors will have the option of including eligible gifts
made in January 1998 in either their 1997 or 1998 tax returns."

And she offers one other little incentive: "Any new or increased gift
received by January 31 is eligible to win one of the silver and star ruby
jewelry pieces specially crafted to commemorate UW's 40th anniversary."

Star columnist boosts universities

Ian Urquhart, Queen's Park columnist for the Toronto Star, had
some
interesting comments yesterday under the heading "Ontario universities
make good case for extra funding". Excerpts:

By any measure, our universities are underfunded, particularly since
the Tories took office in 1995 and proceeded to cut $400 million from
their operating grants. Ontario's per capita expenditure on university
education is now the lowest in Canada.

Comparisons to the United States are even more stark. Take, for
example, the University of Toronto, our leading post-secondary
institution. A comparison with two dozen of the top-ranked public
universities in the U.S. shows U of T's per-student expenditure is
second lowest, ahead of only the University of Nebraska. U of T is
more than $20,000 (U.S.) per student behind UCLA and Michigan.

If knowledge is the economic battleground of the 21st century, as it
surely is, then Ontario has unilaterally disarmed itself. . . .

Accordingly, the universities are proposing a series of specific
measures that would bring immediate results.

It is known as "the Queen's proposal," because it is contained in a
Dec. 16 letter to the government from Queen's University principal
Bill Leggett. It proposes new spending on: recruitment of outstanding
faculty; renovation and repair of existing facilities; rewards for
outstanding research performance; support for information technology,
including the digitalization of university libraries; and expansion of
existing programs in subject areas where universities can't keep up
with the demand.

(On this last point, [Rob] Prichard [of the University
of Toronto] gave an example: demand has so
outstripped supply for electrical engineering at U of T that it now
takes a 91 per cent average to get into the program. Last year, he
fielded a complaint from an MPP whose daughter was denied entry with
an 89 per cent average.)

Prichard and several other university heads pitched the Queen's
proposal to Education Minister Dave Johnson at a meeting at Queen`s
Park on Dec. 22. Johnson was attentive but noncommittal. They agreed
to meet again soon. . . .

While the universities may have Harris on their side, at least
rhetorically, they do not have the sort of access to the media that
municipalities enjoy. (See Mel Lastman.)

But they do have other powerful allies, including big business, which
is usually leery of proposals to increase government spending but has
a soft spot for universities. Indeed, the likes of multimillionaire
financier Hal Jackman, Scotiabank chairman Peter Godsoe and Royal Bank
chairman John Cleghorn are all chancellors of universities
(respectively, U of T, Western and Wilfrid Laurier).

The chancellors are currently drafting a joint letter to the Premier
that is said to endorse a hike in funding.

Getting in the universities' way, however, is their own disunity. They
are roughly divided into two groups: the elite six (U of T, Queen's,
Western, McMaster, Waterloo, and Guelph) and the remaining 11
(including York). The two sides are intensely suspicious of each other
and often lobby at cross-purposes, with the result that nobody gets
anything.

New web site on learning

The Office of Learning Technologies (OLT) was established within Human Resources
Development Canada to work with partners to expand innovative learning opportunities for
Canadians through the use of learning technologies. Its primary focus is to assist adult
learners to gain the knowledge and skills needed to meet the demands of an information and
knowledge-based economy.

The mission of the Office is "Working with partners to expand innovative learning
opportunities through technologies".
The main objectives of the Office are to:
Promote the effective use of learning technologies;
Support assessment, research, and testing related to the use of learning technologies;
Increase the availability and sharing of knowledge and quality information about
learning technologies.

The rest of the story

The last in UW's series of meningitis vaccination clinics is
scheduled for 3 to 7 p.m. today at the Student Life Centre. Eligible
to get shots are students, staff and faculty aged 23 through 25.

Job posting #1 will go up by noon today, as co-op students start their
search for spring term jobs. Employer interviews
begin February 2.

A representative of Mennonite Voluntary Service, based in
Winnipeg, will be at Conrad Grebel College today (main foyer of the
residence building, starting at 3 p.m.) to talk with students who
might be interested in short-term and long-term volunteer
assignments through MVS.

The council of the Graduate Student Association will be
meeting at 6 tonight in Needles Hall room 3004. "The focus of the
meeting is grad student evaluation of President Downey's past term
of office," says GSA president Steve Astels. No word on whether
there will also be discussion of the Graduate House, which was late
in opening for this term, amid confusion over appointment of a
house manager and uncertainty over bar finances.

Harry Blizzard of the audio-visual centre sends word that A-V staff
have found "one laser pointer" in the Arts Lecture Hall -- an
expensive thing for somebody to mislay. "We are used to finding
shoes, gloves, umbrellas, even eyeglasses," he writes, "but this one
is a little unique and different." The tool is now safe
with A-V stores, Engineering II room 2350, where the owner can
claim it "with the right description". Blizzard can be reached
at ext. 3257.

And finally, I received a note of reproof after the whiny comment
about the weather in yesterday's Bulletin. "If you live in Canada and
you don't like winter," my correspondent says, "you're going to be
unhappy for a significant proportion of your life. Can we not take
the obvious negative comments about winter storms as read
and try to find something positive to say?"